Burning Season

A Novel

Martin Griffin

Imagine the man you killed twelve years ago has now returned, in the gripping new thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Second Stranger.

She left him to die. Now, he's back from the ashes.

Twelve years ago, firefighter Jade Bowyer watched a man burn. Curtis Hoole was a criminal—a killer—and although Jade didn't start the fire, she let it finish him.

Now Jade has built a new life as a wildfire lookout in British Columbia, thousands of miles from the memories that haunt her. She has finally escaped her past.

Until a plane crashes in the forest. As fire rages and a bear circles the dead, one survivor clings to life in the wreckage: Curtis Hoole.

Jade's orders are simple: guard the wreck and protect the bodies. Until she knows the truth, she must keep him alive.

Martin Griffin is a dynamic new voice in crime fiction. Before turning his hand to writing, he was a deputy headmaster and a doomed singer. Martin lives in Manchester, England.

Buy it now in print:

Buy it now in ebook:

Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Martin Griffin’s The Last Visitor:

“In this tense and absorbing chronicle, a documentary filmmaker flees a problematic past by rushing into a treacherous present. The Last Visitor is reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but Mr. Griffin’s stylishly written white-knuckler, which culminates in a breathtaking abandoned-lighthouse sequence, creates an atmosphere all its own.” Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

“There’s a lot more going on than a murder investigation in Griffin’s highly atmospheric book, including the necessity for Tess to reconcile the secrets from her past with the exigencies of the present. The plot spins and spins. The best character is the island itself.” Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review

“A good mystery. The flashback narrative ends in an ingenious twist, and the dazzling climax of the present-tense mystery takes place in a Victorian-era lighthouse that rivals Stephen King’s eeriest settings. The final showdown makes the extended sojourn worthwhile.” Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

“Griffin has created an interesting variation on the locked-room mystery.” Booklist

“A taut and inventive closed-circle whodunit. Griffin conjures a tense, paranoid atmosphere and steers the narrative in genuinely surprising directions. This sleek Agatha Christie update is a cut above similar fare.” Publishers Weekly

“A worthy successor to Griffin's great debut, The Second Stranger. Inventive, thrilling and with a fine sense of place, The Last Visitor glistens with menace.” The Daily Mail

"A real tour de force. The Last Visitor is a perfect locked room mystery, with believable characters, razor-sharp dialogue and a desolate island setting that proves to be the stuff of nightmares. Martin Griffin has created a tale that grips you from start to finish.” Kate Rhodes, author of the bestselling Isles of Scilly Mysteries

Praise for The Second Stranger:

“Good premises can come easy; sustaining them across a novel's length is the trick. Martin Griffin does precisely this, and then some, in The Second Stranger, a Misery-evoking debut thriller set in the blizzard-blasted Scottish Highlands.” Shelf Awareness

"A nasty February storm has cut off phone service at the remote MacKinnon Hotel in the Scottish Highlands. Are any of them telling the truth, and will any of them get out alive?” Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review

“Clever and bold. The Second Stranger starts with a shiver of dangerous uncertainty before exploding into full on murder and mayhem. Anything you think you know, you don't.” Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author